The Right Opinion – January 25th, 2012

– I see the City of Cornwall is going to get input from Cornwall citizens on a possible condo at the waterfront. That’s it… the project is dead. Sorry to the Waterfront Committee, but you’re already doomed.

– Did the Waterfront Committee actually say if they didn’t have the condo project they wouldn’t have anything to do? My advice? Call Community Waterfront Friends in North Bay. They’ll have some ideas to keep you busy.

– Isn’t it nice to see we have a government that doesn’t beat up on the very thing that makes our society great? Capitalism. We need more of this and we need more capitalism.

– Orange purge. Support for the NDP in Quebec is half what it was on election day. It couldn’t happen to a better party.
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Oil companies. Obama likes to play the class warfare card when he talks about oil. We have to invest more in clean energy and stop subsidizing big oil is the populist call. We need to make them pay more so every American has a chance to achieve the middle class dream. Blah blah blah. While I’m no big fan of corporate welfare, I do know oil companies spend billions on R&D and pay more taxes than the average American too. The same goes for Canada. You might want to remember that the tax revenue generated by oil is paying for a vast amount of the social services in both countries. Remember when Ed Stelmach raised the royalties on the oil business in Alberta? I do. The R&D and investment dried up and Stelmach had to do a 180. That’s the effect of overtaxing any business.

… we took a look at the 2010 annual reports of the 20 most profitable U.S. companies. Some of the results may surprise you. The average income tax rate within the group was 25.4%. America’s three biggest oil companies, ExxonMobil ( XOM – news – people ), Chevron ( CVX – news – people ) and ConocoPhillips ( COP – news – people ), all endure income tax burdens of more than 40%–higher than the statutory U.S. rate of 35%. Exxon, with a 45% rate, tallied $21.6 billion in worldwide income taxes for 2010. Wal-Mart Stores ( WMT – news – people ) paid $7.1 billion (at a rate of 32.4%) in income taxes.

Related: More on taxes. The continuing dialogue from Obama is that Warren Buffet’s secretary pays more in taxes than Warren Buffet. That’s bull. Buffet pays 15% on capital gains, that’s true, but first he pays tax on his income. So he’s taxed twice.

* I’m having a bad case of déja vu all over again.

Cartoon by Michael Ramirez.

* Tweet of the day.

I’ll try to come up with one of these when I can. Fire one off if you see something interesting.

Honourable mention:

* No sense of humour.

Since when has it become against the law when you offend someone? The case shouldn’t even get a hearing.